His minutes are up so of course his counting stats are up, but check out that field-goal percentage. It’s encouraging, and it hints at Beal’s lofty draft rep as a shooter. I’m interested to see how it progresses now that John Wall’s back and presumably kicking out to him for open perimeter looks.

The bad news is that advanced stats aren’t kind to Beal so far. John Hollinger’s player efficiency ratings have him as the 14th-best rookie, which is not very good. And he’s fifth on the Wiz in win shares, which is really not very good.

Anecdotally, though, I like what I’m seeing. I was at the Nets double-OT game, and Beal had a thunder dunk in traffic, hit a game-tying, buzzer-beating three and sank two clutch free throws. He also hit a contested dagger last week, which had to provide belt-loosening relief to one Steve Buckhantz.

I don’t know, the kid’s 19 years old and 31 games into his career, 30 of which were played without Wall on a horrible team. But things are looking up.

9 thoughts on “Bradley Beal Might Be Pretty Good”

Beal-for-Gay is a repeat of the Okafor-Ariza acquisition. It’s sacrificing potential long-term upside for short term gain – that short term gain being 7-seed upside, tops.

The NBA is a simple league. To succeed, you need at least one of its best players, probably two. At any given time a roster is comprised of a) one of the best players in the league, b) role players, c) young players with the potential to be the best player in the league. The league is full of category b). They grow on trees. A rebuilding team needs lots of c) so hopefully one day you can find an a) or two. Trading Beal for Gay is trading a c) for a b).

I wish I ha Unsilent’s faith in reason and logic, but lets not forget who’s pulling the trigger in the front office. This is the same GM that traded a top 5 pick for a one year rental of Mike Miller and Randy Foye, traded sweet, sweet cap room for the bloated corpses of Trevor Ariza and Emeka Okafor, and drafted Jan Vesely.

Not only is he an awful GM, but Ernie is probably getting into self-preservation mode, and the immediate impact of Gay over the long term growth of Beal could be sold to Ted as “Look, Progress!”

That being said, using Occam’s razor, the correct answer is probably that Memphis floated the rumor themselves to jack up the asking price.but just like when it seemed Vinny was hell bent on selling the farm to move up and draft Sanchez, I won’t exhale until a deal is done and were in the clear.